Continuing
the Minstrel's Tale down along the Costa BlancaThe events portrayed in this
series are not necessarily in chronological order

Miles'd
got killed if he hit me.Thelonious Monk

Chapter
Fourteen

Iron
Men

Hand
on hearthow many of you would have ever heard of Bernie Privin if
he hadn't died recently and you read about it in Jazz Professional and
other publications worldwide? Do you know who he was, even now? Well Bernie
played lead trumpet in a great many of the American big bands we used
to rave about when we were kids. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman,
Artie Shaw, Charlie Barnetthink of a name, and you can bet he was
in there at some time or other, leading one of those great brass sections.

Bernie
was one of the Iron Men. You don't hear of them much. Critics don't wave
their names under your noses. They like to talk about this or that jazz
soloist, who has maybe played a chorus or two on the entire album, but
rarely praise the man who has been soldiering on throughout, resourceful
in his interpretation of the written part, deadly accurate, unflagging,
tireless, utterly reliable. Bandleaders used to say, Give me a good
lead trumpet and a good drummer and I'll give you a great band. There's
a whole lot of truth in that. (Click
here to read about Bernie)

Some years ago a critic reviewed a new LP on which I'd written most of
the scores. Writing in a well-known jazz magazine he said, Most of
the charts on this album were written by a young up-and-coming arranger
called Ron Simmonds. I look forward with interest to hearing more of his
work. When he wrote that I was already sixty-five years old, living
in Spain, retired, with my career and a couple of thousand big band scores
behind me. This guy had never heard of me, because I, too, was one of
the Iron Men.

John Spencer, the Coventry man, now living in Seattle, whom I mentioned
in Chapter Seven, has now written to me, at length, about our schooldays
in Coventry together. For many people this would perhaps not be much of
a big deal, but I went to a lot of schools as a kid. Coming over from
Canada in 1935, and starting at age seven, I attended schools in Hawkwell,
Southend, Hutton Village and Brentwood, all in Essex. Then Barkers' Butts,
Tredington and the Coventry Tech, all in Warwickshire. We moved about
a lot then, and I've moved about a lot more ever since. So for someone
to pop up like this and not only remember the same teachers, but also
remind me of some of the things they used to say to us, is nothing short
of a miracle. And it's all due to the World Wide Web. If you want to find
something, anything, it's on there somewhere.

Jack Parnell phoned me not long ago and we had a long chat about the
good old days. He sent me the CD reviewed elsewhere in Jazz Professional
and it is amazing. I remembered the music well, how could I ever forget,
but I had never heard most of the issued recordings before. Then Vic Lewis
called, and he got Stan Reynolds to send me some tapes of the stuff we
recorded with his band. We started talking about things that had
happened on tour with Vic's band and he asked me if I remembered the incident
at the carnival in Basle, described in Ron's Pages, where one of the musicians
in the band went off with an exceedingly beautiful girl at the end, only
to discover that the girl was a guy.

Now I remember well who it was, because he was one of my mates, but Vic
named another man. So I asked Stan, and also Pete Warner, both of whom
were there that night. They remembered the incident vividly, and each
of them named a different person. So now we have four. Gives you an idea
of the problems the police face when they are asking for eye-witnesses.

Of course, as you all know, my memory is faultless. I can remember everything
that has happened to me since I was born as if it were yesterday. Every
note of every piece of music I ever played, every incident, every tiny
detail. Absolute recall. Last week I mentioned to my wife, Conny, in passing,
that a certain object in a television commercial we had just seen was
yellow. She said, at once, that I was wrong. It was blue. We got into
a Basil Fawlty type dialogue, no it isn't, yes it is, no it isn't, yes
it is, no it isn't, YES IT IS! At that moment the commercial came on again
and it was blue. Well it was yellow the last time, no it wasn't, yes it
was, no it wasn't, and so on.

I had an email from Dougie Robinson. Dougie was Geraldo's lead alto for
many years; took over the job from Harry Hayes. Wonderful player. We worked
together with Geraldo in Monte Carlo, later on in Jack Parnell's television
orchestra. He now lives in Portugal and plays in his own jazz group. Says
he practices every day. Not bad for an 82 year old. Another Libra, of
course.

When I read that I took a look at my trumpet case, gathering dust in
the corner. I'm afraid to open it. I know the valves will be jammed solid,
not to mention the tuning slides. Maybe I should put the damn case somewhere
else. At least throw a cloth over it. Perhaps bury it in the garden. But
curiosity got the better of me and I took out the Schilke, screwed it
together and went splutter, splutter, squeak, curse and splutter.

What on earth is going on up there, shouted Conny. She had just come
in from cleaning the goldfish pond. This time she hadn't fallen in, but
it has always been touch and go since the first time. That was when she
squelched slowly back up the steps, dragging weeds,
like Joseph Cotton in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Always good
for a laugh, but I've learned not to laugh after that first time.

I'm practising the trumpet, my love, I said. Conny has never heard me
play anywhere except in the local band here in Spain. She only knows what
I have told her about my past life. It could be all lies, for all she
knows, especially now. Suddenly a most gorgeous high note emerged from
the trumpet. Ah! There was one left in there after all. I put it
away again quickly. Don't want to push my luck.

There is an old German lady living nearby who doesn't believe a word
I say. From time to time I've casually mentioned knowing certain German
film stars, celebrities, bandleaders and singers when they appear on the
box. Well of course I do, having worked with many of them on an almost
daily basis. On her last birthday, she was ninety or a hundred, can't
remember which, I overheard her say to her companion, Du müßt
kein Wort von ihm glauben. Er spinnt. (You mustn't believe a
word he tells you. He's a spinner of tales.) She demands to know if
I ever played with Bert Kaempfert. Well, no. He's just about the only
only I didn't work with. Told you so, she says, triumphantly. For her
the entertainment world begins and ends with Bert. I did actually turn
down a gig with him once, because I was working, but if I told her that
she'd have said er spinnt again, so I didn't.

One of the other guests at her party, a young Englishman, later asked
me what I'd done in life. I told him I'd been a big band trumpet player.
Had I played with anyone famous? Ted Heath, for instance? Yes, I had.
Oh, how jolly amusing, he said.

Bert Kaempfert's daughter, Marion, has been running the band, with trumpeter
Tony Fisher, ever since her Dad died. In 1990 she married the Danish trumpeter
Alan Botschinsky. Alan played a lot with us in Peter Herbolzheimer's band.
He and Marion spent last Christmas at Peter's place in Cologne and Peter
tells me that Alan is not too well now. He had a stroke a while back and
is slowly recovering from that. The trouble for me here is that I can
still see Alan, and all the other people I worked with, in my mind's eye,
the way they were twenty or thirty years ago. I tend to forget that they
are all about the same age as I am now. Peter has asked me to go with
him to Belgrade in June. Ack van Rooyen is playing there. He's another
mate of mine. Maybe I'll go. Might even see Dusko Goykovic there. Dusko
lives in Munich but he often gets a big band together in Belgrade. I'll
take my trumpet along and crash in on the gig. Maybe play The Flight
of the Bumble Bee. Just kidding.

Even though it's forty years since I played in a touring band I still
have vivid dreams where I turn up on the gig without my trumpet, tuxedo,
white shirt, black shoes...you name it. Can't find my car, I know the
stuff's in there. I walk through deserts, along promenades, through strange
cities, down weird underground stations, looking for the damn car. I wake
up to find the light on and my wife watching me anxiously. What was all
that about then? I've wrecked the bed. Nothing, dear. Go back to sleep.
I mentioned the dreams to Pete Warner. He has them all, plus having his
tenor fall to bits just as he's about to play a feature. So it happens
to all of us, but that doesn't make it any less alarming.